sympathy. ‘Call the hospital,’ he snapped. ‘I want every available person at the hospital out here now. Tell them that. And then help get those kids clear. Colin says there’s still kids on the bus. You have to get them off. You must.’
But that was all he had time for. Jodie. He was losing Jodie.
Hell, he needed pressure. He’d have to clamp blood vessels. He had to stop this bleeding.
There was still chaos around him.
But he could only do what he could manage now. If he didn’t stop the bleeding within minutes, Jodie would be dead.
Marty appeared at his side with his doctor’s bag—already open—and Devlin blessed him.
‘Help Katy now,’ he told him.
That was all he had time for. He blocked out the remaining chaos. He had one child to care for.
He had one life in his hands and he could think of nothing else.
Emma lifted her head with extreme caution. What on earth had happened?
Where was she?
She stared around her, stunned. Cautiously she pushed herself to a sitting position, willing the fog to clear so she could finally figure out what must have happened.
There’d been a crash. There must have been a crash.
But she couldn’t remember. All she knew was that she was sprawled on the road. She remembered lying still, trying to make her head work, exploring every piece of her body, unable to believe that she was still alive.
Until the voice had arrived. The face. She remembered the face.
The face above her had cemented her feeling that she was in some other space. Not here. Not in reality. The face was her husband’s.
And Corey was dead.
No. He wasn’t dead. He was here.
Maybe she was dead.
No, she told herself fiercely, trying hard to get a grip on reality.
Corey was dead. She wasn’t.
Someone was snapping orders, fast, harsh. The man she’d thought was Corey?
Someone was crying. A child. It was a thin, fragile sobbing and it helped her haul herself together. It helped ground her.
The fog receded, just a little.
She’d definitely been in a car smash. This was real.
Somewhere a child was terrified. Did that mean she had to pull herself together and do something about it?
She put her hand to her head and felt, gingerly, all over. Ouch. OK, she’d been hit on the head and maybe she’d been out of it for a minute or so. But she was OK. She was fine.
She moved her head a little and paused.
All right, not fine. But she was OK, and OK was all she had to be going on with.
But this wasn’t just her. She put a hand on her bulge and thought in sudden fierce anxiety, My baby has to be OK, too.
As if in response she felt a kick, for all the world like an indignant reminder that she should take more care of her precious cargo.
‘Hey, this wasn’t my fault,’ she told her bulge as she pushed herself up onto knees that were decidedly jelly-like.
She used the car—her mangled car—to haul herself higher. To her feet.
Her car was a mangled wreck. She’d been lucky to get out alive.
She was alive. What next?
The face had said to lie still.
How could she?
The child’s sobbing was a trickling stream of fear. What had the professor said at the kids’ hospital where she’d done her medical internship? If a kid comes through the front door screaming, he can usually be put at the end of the queue. It’s the quiet ones you look at first. Don’t ignore the quiet ones.
Did that mean she could ignore the sobbing?
No. This sobbing wasn’t a hysterical scream. It was a sound of pure terror.
Where was the face? Where was the man she’d thought was Corey?
What had happened?
She stared around her, growing more appalled by the minute.
There were logs everywhere, vast, bare trunks, each maybe two feet thick and twenty feet long. They were sprawled over the road like bowled ninepins.
A guy—maybe the truck driver?—was retching over on the verge.
Another guy—a little man with a white face and a ripped shirt—was frantically punching numbers into a mobile phone.
A third adult was crouched by the lorry, clutching his head. There was a crimson stain blooming under his hands.
And then there were the children.
One of the children was lying on the road and someone else—another man, the face?—was working frantically over him. Over her?
Her. A girl.
The little girl was wearing pink tights, stained crimson. There was a medical bag spread open and she could see the face was trying to attach clamps.
He looked so like Corey, she thought, the fog drifting. If he was Corey then he must be a doctor, which would explain…
He wasn’t Corey. He was an unknown doctor, working desperately to save a life. She was concussed. She was seeing things.
She wasn’t imagining the blood. There was far too much blood.
She could help. She took a step towards him and then she paused, her medical training slamming in.
No. This wasn’t about one child. She had to figure out priorities.
Triage.
Somehow she forced her attention from the doctor and his small patient. Her eyes started moving methodically from child to child, assessing as she went.
These kids had all obviously clambered or been lifted from the wreck of the bus. Scratches, lacerations, shock. She did a visual check of each child as well as she could. Looking for desperate need.
Damn, why didn’t her legs want to hold her up?
They had to. They had no choice.
The guy with the bloody head—an older guy in a suit—was looking as if he was in real trouble. He was sitting by the bus as if he’d collapsed there.
Maybe she should go to him first.
His
